The Ghost and Mrs. Hobbs (7 page)

“Goodness, Al,” her mother said sleepily. “You're awfully gung-ho this morning.”

“Yup,” said Allie, eager to be off. “So I'll see you later, okay?”

“Hang on, please. Give me a second to wake up and think. What time are you going to finish at the library?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, check in with your dad when you do, okay? He and Mike will be home until the lacrosse game at one. If you don't finish up before then, why don't you meet them over at the high school.”

“Okay.”

“Or you could come help me at the store,” her mother teased.

“Gee, thanks, Mom,” said Allie with a smile. “That makes even homework sound like fun.”

“What about lunch?” her mother asked, looking concerned.

Allie patted her pocket. “I've got money. If I get hungry, I can go to that little store across from the library and get a sandwich.”

“Okay, sweetie. Give me a kiss.”

Allie kissed her mother's cheek and ran through the back door into the garage to get her bike and helmet.

At Mr. Henry's house, she reached under the flowerpot for the key and let herself into the kitchen. “Hoover,” she called eagerly. “Come here, girl.”

From the other room she heard the click-click-click of toenails against the floor. Then Hoover's big, shaggy, golden head appeared.

“Hi, Hoovey,” Allie crooned, sinking to her knees as she always did so that she could bury her face in
the dog's soft, warm fur. “Do you want to play first or eat first?”

But instead of bounding over for a hug, as usual, Hoover had come to an abrupt halt in the doorway. A low growl rumbled deep in her throat. Then she burst into a series of high, sharp barks and began backing away from Allie with small, nervous steps.

“Hoover, what's the matter? It's
me
,” Allie said.

Thinking that perhaps Hoover was upset by Mr. Henry's absence or confused by her own sudden presence, Allie remained on her knees, trying to make herself as non-threatening as possible. She coaxed in a gentle voice, “Hey, Hoovey, it's only me. I came to feed you, buddy. Would you like that? Want some food, Hoover? Hmmm?”

But the fur was up on Hoover's neck now, and she continued to alternate between deep growls and shrill, excited barks. Allie was completely bewildered. She tried for several minutes to settle Hoover down, and finally couldn't stand it any longer. The poor dog became more and more distraught, and Allie couldn't bear to watch her. Deeply puzzled and dismayed, she filled the water and food dishes, and after one last pleading attempt to get Hoover to play, she let herself out of the house.

Riding into town, she thought she remembered hearing somewhere that dogs were sensitive to supernatural beings. It might have been in a movie she'd
seen. If that was true, Hoover could be reacting to the ghost of John Walker. Did that mean he was always hanging around her? No, that couldn't be it. She'd spent a lot of time with Hoover when Lucy Stiles's ghost was around, and the dog had been fine.

When she got to the library and tugged on the heavy wooden door, nothing happened. She tried again to open it, then looked up at the sign with the library's hours:
SATURDAY 9:00 A.M. TO 5:00 P.M
.

She looked at her watch. Eight-fifteen. What a stupid morning this was turning out to be. Sighing with frustration, she sat down on the steps and watched the meager Saturday-morning traffic going by. Her thoughts spun in the same circles as they had the night before, with the added worry of Hoover's odd behavior thrown in.

Meanwhile, what was she going to do for forty-five minutes?

Armstrong Street wasn't far away. There wasn't any reason why she couldn't ride there on her bike and see if she could find number 1228. Maybe Mrs. Hobbs would be outside, and they could strike up a casual, friendly conversation about John Walker.

Yeah, right.

The only way she was going to find out about Mrs. Hobbs was the library. Which wasn't open yet. In the meantime, she thought, it wouldn't hurt to check out Mrs. Hobbs's house.

The morning was quiet as Allie pedaled slowly along, checking house numbers. She didn't often come down Armstrong Street, and she looked about curiously. A woman in a bathrobe came out to pick up the newspaper. A small black dog raced beside Allie's bike, barking frantically for a while, before turning around and heading home.

What's with all the dogs this morning? Allie wondered. She decided this one was merely performing its doggy duty to protect its territory.

As she reached the 1100's, she noticed that the houses became smaller and closer together, and were often in need of paint or repair. Here and there she spotted a falling-down porch, a boarded-over window, a missing stair tread. Well-manicured flower beds and careful landscaping slowly gave way to weed-filled lawns and haphazard clumps of unpruned bushes and scraggly trees.

And then she was in front of number 1228. The yard was small and neatly kept, but it wasn't the yard that claimed Allie's attention. It was the house. It looked like two houses stuck together. The right side was perfectly normal. It was painted white, with black shutters at the curtained windows, and there was a little porch with a rocking chair by the door. The left side was a framework of scrap boards and plywood, covered by tarps and tattered plastic sheeting.

To Allie it looked decidedly strange, even spooky. She rode by slowly, trying to imagine the reason for the house's queer appearance. People ran out of money for home-improvement projects, she knew that. Until recently the desk in her bedroom had been a piece of plywood held up by cinder blocks. Her parents had been saving for a long time to build a family room onto their house, and her mother wanted to remodel the old-fashioned kitchen someday, when they had the money.

Maybe Mrs. Hobbs had been saving to fix up her house, too. Maybe her promotion would help. Or maybe she liked it that way, although Allie had never heard of anyone deliberately finishing just one side of a house.

At any rate, Allie had wanted to see where Mrs. Hobbs lived, and now she had done it. She took one last look back and thought she saw the curtain in the upper right window slip back into place, as though someone had been looking out.

Shrugging off the chill that tiptoed down her spine, she pedaled back to the library. When the doors opened at nine, she was the first person inside. Mrs. Harris, the librarian, explained to Allie that old editions of the local newspapers were stored on microfilm. She showed Allie how to thread the spool of film into a machine that made the tiny print readable.
Then she asked, “Now, what's the date of the paper you need?”

Allie was dumbfounded. “I don't know,” she replied. “What I want to do is read about fires. Serious fires where somebody might have died.”

She thought Mrs. Harris gave her a searching look before asking, “Recently?”

“No,” said Allie. She racked her brain, trying to think of when the fire—if there had been a fire—might have taken place. “I guess I'd better go back twenty years or so,” she said, feeling daunted by the prospect of looking through so many old newspapers.

But Mrs. Harris was smiling. “You're in luck,” she said. “Several years ago we got a grant to create an index for
The Seneca Times
. It will tell us the days when items about fires appeared. But it would help if you could be even more specific. Do you have any other details that might focus the search so you don't have to look at every article about a fire?”

“I have a person's name,” said Allie.

Mrs. Harris smiled. “Terrific. What is it?”

“Hobbs,” said Allie.

“Hmmm. That rings a faint bell. Let's see . . .”

Using the index to find articles about fires that also mentioned the name Hobbs, Allie and Mrs. Harris worked quickly. They found several entries for
Hobbs that weren't about fires, and Allie said she wanted to see those articles as well. Soon she was seated at the microfilm reader browsing through old issues of
The Seneca Times
.

Some of the Hobbs articles were not about
her
Hobbs, but one, dated April 2, 1981, was an announcement of the March 30 marriage of Evelyn Murdoch and Clifford Hobbs. Allie realized she hadn't known Mrs. Hobbs's first name until now. The “E” in E. M. Hobbs was for Evelyn. It was such a pretty, feminine,
normal
name. Allie had trouble connecting it with the horrifying figure of Mrs. Hobbs.

Eagerly Allie read on. The wedding had been a private ceremony. No mention was made of ushers or bridesmaids or flowers, but there was a small, smudgy photograph of the newlyweds, and Allie studied it with fascination.

If she hadn't seen the accompanying words in black and white, she'd never have believed that the pretty young woman smiling into the camera was the feared cafeteria lady known as the Snapping Turtle. In a lace-collared dress with pearl earrings and a pearl necklace, Evelyn Hobbs was the picture of a blissful bride. One hand held a bouquet; the other was nestled in the hand of her husband. Clifford, while not dashingly handsome, appeared kind and cheerful and solid, and he was beaming at the camera
with the look of a man who couldn't believe his good luck.

Allie spent a long time studying the photo, trying to reconcile that Mrs. Hobbs with the one she'd run from in terror the day before.

Finally, she moved on to the next article mentioning the name Evelyn Hobbs. In the October 2, 1981, edition of the paper, Allie came upon an announcement of the birth of Thomas Spencer Hobbs, son of Evelyn and Clifford Hobbs.

Her amazement then turned to horror as she read of the deaths of Clifford and Thomas Hobbs in a fire at their home at 1228 Armstrong Street on November 7, just a month after the baby's birth. Also dead from smoke inhalation was a visitor, John Walker.

As she read the name John Walker, a jolt of what felt almost like electricity passed through Allie's body. She had been right! John Walker, her ghost,
had
died in a fire. The same fire that had killed Mrs. Hobbs's husband and son.

With a mounting feeling of dread, Allie traced the story as it unfolded over the days that followed. The fire was under investigation. First, the fire chief said that the circumstances surrounding its origin were “suspicious.” Upon further investigation, he announced that the fire had definitely been the work of an arsonist.

Mrs. Hobbs, mother and wife of two of the deceased, had been at a meeting of the women's auxiliary of her church at the time of the fire. Upon returning to find her house in flames, she had entered the burning building in an attempt to save her husband and infant. After receiving severe burns and suffering from smoke inhalation, she was rescued by firefighters.

The police had not announced the names of any suspects. However, the old newspaper stated, Mrs. Hobbs was continuing to be questioned at her room in the Seneca Heights Hospital.

Her hands trembling, Allie raced through the microfilmed pages to the next day's news. When she reached the first page of the November 9 edition, she eagerly began to scan it for an update of the fire investigation. Nothing on the first page . . . Nothing on the second . . . She was about to move to page 3 when the print began to dissolve.

Puzzled, she pushed the buttons to move the portion of the film that was under the lens. Immediately that began to dissolve as well. It looked as if it were melting right before her eyes. An acrid smell reached her nostrils, and a thin trickle of smoke rose from the microfilm reader. The film
was
melting! The smoke became thicker and started billowing from the machine.

Allie jumped up to find Mrs. Harris. But before she
was halfway across the room, a bell began to clang and the lights in the library flashed on and off. For the second time in two days, Allie found herself evacuating a smoky building with the sound of a fire alarm wailing in her ears.

With an odd sense of déjà vu, Allie watched as the fire trucks arrived and firemen swarmed the library. When they emerged shortly afterward, Allie sidled over to listen as Chief Rasmussen reported to Mrs. Harris.

“There was no actual fire,” he said, “just lots of smoke. It appears there was a meltdown in that microfilm reader. Have you had trouble with it before?”

Mrs. Harris looked bewildered. “Never,” she replied. “I can't imagine what could have happened. Those machines don't even get hot ordinarily.” Just then she spotted Allie. “Oh, here's Allie Nichols, the young lady who was using it. Are you all right, dear?”

“I'm fine.”

“Do you have any idea what happened?”

“No,” said Allie. “All of a sudden the plastic started to melt and smoke like crazy. I jumped up to find you, but the alarm was already going off.”

“Allie was doing research on local fires,” Mrs. Harris explained to the chief. Then, with a startled laugh, she added, “What an odd coincidence!”

The chief raised his eyebrows and gave Allie a long, intent gaze. “What grade did you say you're in?” he asked finally.

I didn't say, Allie thought. Puzzled, she answered, “Sixth.”

“So you must go to Seneca Heights School,” the chief said thoughtfully.

She nodded, wondering what he was getting at.

“Were you there yesterday afternoon during the fire?”

Allie nodded again.

Mrs. Harris was looking back and forth from the chief to Allie with a baffled expression on her face. “There was a fire at the school, too?” she asked.

“Yes,” said the chief, still looking speculatively at Allie. “And you say you came here to get information about fires, is that right?” he asked her.

“For a school project,” she explained. Would that make the chief stop eyeing her with suspicion?

“Oh? Tell me about your project, Allie.”

Now the chief must be thinking she was some kind of fire-setting weirdo. How was she supposed to explain
herself? If she mentioned the ghost, he'd think she was a different kind of weirdo. For just a moment she wished she'd never heard the voice of her ghost, never seen his face. But no! She didn't really mean that. She simply needed to make the chief understand that she wasn't a firebug.